But after we finished bouncing off the intruders and I’ve started a dialogue with him it turned out that he’s not such a gentleman after all. In nearly every second sentence in his dialogue he makes use of the notorious ‘F word’! No exaggeration! After a short while listening to his insults (calling me a moron several times) I got fed up of his overuse of nasty language and started to loathe this guy. Note that it turns out that he’s supposed to be an unlikable character but this could have also been very well transported without the overuse of bad language. … *Spoilers ahead*!

[ad#ad_content]There are few things that I hate in computer games and I’m among the last people who would complain about oodles of gore, violence, pixel-blood and naked boobs in games but one thing makes me sick: The excessive use of foul language to the point where it hurts the game’s atmosphere!

For what reason does Desmond’s dialogue need to have these many bad words in it? It could have been much more acceptable without them. The dialogue writer apparently overused bad language to the point where the dialogue sounded poor and unimaginative. Of course this isn’t the only situation in Fallout 3 where explicit words are used. There are other characters who (over)use them rather often and it’s no less annoying. Then there are factions like for example the Raiders, evil and dirty outlaws who use the occasional nasty word and guess what? I think that’s ok because it fits into their context.

This is what Desmond's dialogue looks like if you compress it into one sentence.

Likewise there are other games that use tons of bad language and in some it obviously supports the theme as in the Grand Theft Auto series. In some others it doesn’t support the theme and is overused to the point where I abort playing the game completely (Crysis anyone? Great graphics but horrible story if you ask me). Again other games make use of dialogue that is more tailored towards adults but they do it in a very well written way. The excellent Vampire Bloodlines: The Masquerade would be one of these.

In my opinion all the exaggerated overuse of bad language is much more harmful to players than any blood and guts orgy because the dialogue is the first thing that affects most players. Game developers should be aware of that there are some more intellectual players existing than the average YouTube commenter!

I appreciate it if a game has a very well written dialogue and I don’t mind the occasional use of nasty words in the right context but the recent trend that more and more games go is not only pointless but downright cheap style! On the contrary often subtlety makes a game so much more precious!